Because a transaction account issuer's profit is primarily driven by the use of their product, an important objective for such companies is to persuade businesses and organizations to accept the transaction account issuer's product for payment of goods and services. Therefore, competition amongst transaction account issuers intensifies as new issuers enter the market and as foreign issuers expand globally. However, with the growing occurrences of identity theft, money laundering, and other types of credit related fraud, governments and the issuers themselves have implemented a number of regulations and controls. These regulations and controls are aimed at reducing such fraud by more carefully issuing and monitoring transaction account use. Moreover, those organizations and businesses desiring to accept a transaction account number as payment are often allowed to do so only under careful scrutiny to ensure their legitimacy. Transaction account issuers, therefore, adhere to both governmental and internal controls when authorizing an organization or business to accept their issued transaction account payment instruments (merchant acquisition).
Balancing the need to acquire merchants with preventing fraud includes transaction account issuers trying to win market share, while managing the risk of having their product used irresponsibly and/or fraudulently. Just as there are a set of rules governing the issuance of transaction accounts to consumers, there are likewise rules and procedures governing merchant acquisition. While some procedures may vary from one issuer to the next, many procedures are typically imposed by governmental entities such that the procedures must be adhered to by issuers within the particular country. However, in the global economy, laws and procedures vary from one country to the next country. As such, managing merchant acquisition to ensure that all of the internal and external rules and procedures are being adhered to is a labor intensive, yet vital process.
Transaction account issuers acquire merchants in various ways. For example, field representatives may physically visit a place of business to market their product to the merchant. Under this scenario, the field representative may be equipped with the appropriate paper forms and/or a personal computer loaded with electronic forms. The field representative may further have a checklist to help ensure the appropriate forms are completed during the acquisition process. Again, the acquisition process may vary from one merchant to the next depending on the nature of the business; therefore, the forms and/or procedures used to properly complete the forms may also vary.
A transaction account issuer may also acquire merchants by accepting a merchant application over the Internet. Regardless of the acquisition method, it is usually the transaction account issuer's responsibility to ensure that the proper rules and procedures are followed. For large transaction account issuers such as American Express Corporation, for example, merchant acquisition is closely monitored. As previously stated, this process can be a very time consuming and difficult task considering the large number of merchant applications and acquisition forms. Moreover, following up and ensuring that errors are corrected further adds to the complexity of the task. As such, a system is needed to electronically manage the complex compliance monitoring workflow in an accurate and timely manner. A need also exists for a system that randomly selects merchant acquisition data for a compliance review, notifies the appropriate personnel when it is time to perform a task, and ensures that the task is sufficiently completed.